Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The writing of another word instead of the one intended by the writer: analogous to heterophemy.
  • noun Heterogeneous spelling; the use of the same letter or letters with different powers in different positions or in different words, as of c in call and cell, ough in rough, dough, and hough, etc.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun That method of spelling in which the same letters represent different sounds in different words, as in the ordinary English orthography; e. g., g in get and in ginger.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun countable An incorrect spelling; a spelling different from accepted spelling.
  • noun uncountable Spelling in which a particular letter represents more than one possible sound.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

hetero- + -graphy

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Examples

  • The good mother -- had she not endeared herself to the modern reader by the affectionate gentleness and the quaint glimpses of domestic life that her family letters reveal -- would be irresistible by the ingeniously bad spelling in which she reveled, transgressing even the wide limits then allowed to feminine heterography.

    Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 6 Lucia Isabella Gilbert Runkle 1864

Comments

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  • Hm. What is the relationship between heterography and disspelling? See sprots for discussion history.

    August 11, 2015